Zooheekock

He contends that monopolistic capitalism, if allowed to thrive, will wreak havoc on the economy and fair business practices.

Best great cracking on breaking up Siam Cement then - that has a good 30+% market share, which is enough to be considered a monopoly in many places. Oh no, hang on a sec....

Coming from the Nation, it's a case of do as I say, not as I do.

When people do not have the ability to solve problems intellectually, they resort to violence in order to achieve change.

The most violent chapter of recent Thai history was written by someone who went to Eton and Oxford.

if you don't like going to bars you will be bored out of your mind here

If getting drunk/sleeping with hookers is the only thing which stands between you and being bored out of your mind, you've got some serious problems.

50,000 is potentially tons of money but whether or not it works out that way depends on your tastes and adaptability and whilst I wouldn't advertise what you're doing, I also wouldn't worry too much about people knowing about your work.

And I have thought of another passive downside to being able to understand Thai and that's the fact I can know understand everything that's said in the 3 & 7 mini operas my wife is inextricably addicted to

They're quite good (in a trashy kind of way) when you get into them - had some funny parts (the tom was great) and I've been inexpicably drawn to

I don't know what "90% fluent" means - as is often the case, my reading is far better than my other skills but unless it's a text on a particularly technical topic, I can read general fiction, the news, blogs etc in Thai without too much difficulty - but if you want to get to a decent level in any language, unless you're blessed with exceptional natural ability, you have to read. One of the most important parts of learning a language is being exposed to comprehensible input, which is exactly what extensive reading gives you. Reading obviously helps develop skills in reading but I've also found that it's helped my listening hugely and it also helps enormously with acquiring and retaining vocabulary as well as getting you to internalize Thai’s unusual (from an English-speaker’s perspective) sentence-level and discourse-level patterns.